Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge 2007

Sarah Giannantonio writes "AtomFilms and LucasFilms launched today the 2007 Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge. This is a yearly competition where the Star Wars community send in their fan films to be judged by George Lucas. Award recipients will have their film shown during Celebration IV and also on Spike TV. New for 2007 is the fan fiction category."

to be judged by George Lucas

Let me guess, on their potential for product placement and merchandising?

George Lucas you say?

I think we all know what he'll have to so say.

"The CGI is weak in this one, move along,... move along"

Lucas' Original Vision

Leia: "I love you!"
Han: "I love you too."

Most of us have absolutely no qualifications whatsoever in production of art of any kind. But I reckon we can still produce something to blow this paticular judge over. Then again, that six year old with the Jar-Jar crayon animation (0.2fps) has a pretty solid product.

EP IV was the high point of the Lucas SW work

My brother in law the film professor loathes Star Wars, largely for what it has done to the film industry. I don't agree; EP IV was watershed film, and if it somehow corrupted Hollywood's sensibilities, that's Hollywood's fault. Judged on its own, EP IV was a very good movie. The acting, aside from the old pros who turn in a solid performance in their sleep, may have been uneven. The dialog was unquestionably dreadful. But it had its corresponding virtues. It was fast paced, energetic, and had a kind of visual wit that more than compensated for its lack of verbal wit.

None of the subsequent Lucas movies are nearly as good as EP IV. I don't count EP V as a Lucas film; it was much more solid but much less innovative than EP IV. In EP VI, the franchise is starting to show signs of middle age spread, but the movie is carried by the greater maturity of Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. I think the later Lucas films suffer because Lucas the story teller needs the pressure of limited resources to stay on track. The actors never have a chance. Samuel Jackson has that rare quality that differentiates the movie star from the actor: its fun just seeing him on screen. Utterly wasted.

Necessity is the mother of invention. When Lucas made EP IV, he had to overcome two limits: screen time and budget. He didn't think he'd get to make another one of these movies, so he put as much as he could into EP IV, which was the fastest paced 121 minutes most people had ever seen on screen.

The other thing that helped Lucas in EP IV was the limitation of what he could put on screen given the budget and technology available. For Ed Wood, two guys sitting on folding chairs in front of a blank wall was perfectly acceptable as set for an airline cockpit. For Lucas, no set that was not created largely in CGI would ever be good enough, however good it might be. So where he put special effects into the movie, he did not dwell on them; they'd simply fly by. It made the story more credible by putting it in a believably detailed setting.

A fantasy story needs the details to be credible. That's what made The Day the Earth Stood Still such a great movie, it was so believable in all its other details that accepting a man in a cheesy foam rubber suit as a giant robot was possible.

CGI is what killed Lucas' filmmaking. Once he could put anything in his head up on screen, he could not resist drawing attention to it, to the detriment of the story. The characters are lost in epic set pieces. What is worse, the more you look at the details, the less credibile they seem, be they ever so well crafted. In contrast, the LotR series was stuffed to the gills with incredible sets, props and effects, but Peter Jackson uses them with restraint. Jackson had a way of alternating between huge and intimate scenes that somehow made the characters expand to epic scale. This may have been what Lucas was aiming at. EP I - III actually try to tell a rather interesting, somber story, but it is a story that requires a focus on the actors. People didn't take to Hayden Christensen's uncharismatic Anakin, but his portrayal of Anakin as a shallow and somewhat spoiled was entirely right. It's just that story wasn't told coherently enough to make its point: evil comes from people trying to do the right thing in a narrow minded way. The story desperately needed to connect the dark glamour of Darth Vader to Anakin's stubborn willfulness.

I don't want to be too down on the later Lucas movies; I got my ticket's worth of entertainment. But I have zero desire to see them a second time.

When you look at EP I through III, they are very different movies than EP IV, much more ponderous. In EP IV the story drags you forward when you'd like another second to look at the details. In later Lucas movies you keep wishing the story would get a move on. Things would have been different if Lucas had been constrained to use the same budget and technology he had for EP IV.

I do take my hat off to Lucas though, for encouraging f

All I can say

is that his 2003 choice mirrored his writing ability of the last few movies.

Remake Episode One - THAT should be the challenge

George should commission someone to totally recut and / or remake The Phantom Menace. Rather than expand the universe, perfect that first film. Amid some rather pretty scenery and effect, there are soooooo many cringe-worthy performances and moments.

Think The Phantom Edit - only more radical.

And for the love of The Force, get Portman to re-loop her lines.

Or perhaps he should turn over ALL the raw footage for Revenge of the Sith so a real editor can cut that film together properly. Let's all fire up FinalCutPro and have at it!

Sorry Ben - you're a damn good sound designer and a Friend of George, but ... your editing powers are WEAK old man.

Re:Remake Episode One - THAT should be the challen

George should commission someone to totally recut and / or remake The Phantom Menace.

He doesn't need to, the Magnoliafan edit [thepiratebay.org] is about as perfect a re-cut as could be done. It has the aliens and droids dubbed and subtitled which allows the plot to revolve around slave trading rather than some nebulous trade embargo, and Jar Jar Binks calls Anakin a little bastard. It's rather good.

Good entry

Found this not so long ago, I think it is top of the line fan made movies http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5196652186 157038936 [google.com]

Episode 7: Revenge of the Geeks

"Luke, I am your project manager."

"Noooo, it's not true! I'll never work for you."

This is old but still good

Store wars [youtube.com] is quite old, but still very good. IMHO. Think it will make grade?

Finally - the Star Wars fad is fading out

Finally - the Star Wars fad is fading out. There's less than 30 comments here on what would have been a 300+ topic just a few years ago.

Remember when Star Wars was fun and even a little cool? Me too - it was 1983 and I was 7.

not particularly interested

I'm not particularly interested in FanFic. I also agree that the prequels could have been better... I'll be interested again when George decides that there are better writers out there and he uses something from the EU to make a movie.

2007 -- not enough time it is!

I hope they have a 2008 or 2009 challenge, too; a fan film can take some serious lead and production time.

I have a friend who's working on a SWFF right now (in which i have a small part), and the amount of work -- synchronizing people's schedules, getting people for cast and crew, yadda, rendering (on legit software, no less), scraping up the cashish for ... everything ... it all adds up and it takes time. For my friend's film, we're looking at a release date of January 2009.

Of course, my friend is planning for a 2 hr film.

.max

more sword training w/ "darth" and the 3d degree black belt trainer tonight... sigh ---ouch!

Star Wars Cops

These guys already deserve some merit. The best SW short I've seen in my life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWr6ec2zEyE [youtube.com]

IMPS

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned I.M.P.S.: The Relentless [impstherelentless.com] yet. Episode one was one of the best FanFics I have seen, now if episode 2 would just make it out.
Though, having read a little bit, it sounds like it can't be entered as it is being done as a serious work, rather than a parody. I realize that Lucas technically needs to protect his franchise, but that just seems over the top; let the fans do your marketing for you, and pat them on the head once in a while, it won't hurt you that much.

Remind me, guys ...

How many of us have directed major feature films that have grossed $4 billion, created two legendary movie series, and shepherded cinematic developments like ILM, THX and even Pixar? You may not like some of his movies, but George Lucas has probably done more for the movies you DO like than you can ever realize! Oh, and most of the teenagers I know (who were seven or eight when "Phantom Menace" came out) happen to think Jar-Jar rules. Remember when no one liked Ewoks? Now everyone thinks they're cute and cuddly and forgets how much they were hated. But that's beside the point. To bash George Lucas because you didn't like a few of his movies is just crazy. Thirty years later, you're still arguing about "Star Wars" ... that says a lot to me!

Please - nobody enter

I think it would be fantastic if nobody entered this contest. Lucas is a hack. Everything since the original films has sucked. Mod me down for saying so, but it's the truth. Couple that with the fact that Lucas has said that the original trilogy wasn't what he really wanted, and the Ep I - III were his true vision. So he admits that his true vision is AWFUL. He's a lucky hack, and people should regard him as such. Too bad that he gets all the credit for the good movies, which has made him millions and millions of dollars.

OK, if you have to enter, just submit a film giving Lucas the finger.

Blow away your peers

Just grab a camera and make a movie that will blow away your peers.

So anything better than Episode 1 will do. Shouldn't be too difficult.

I sense a great disturbance in the force

I sense a great disturbance in the force as if quality fiction screamed in agony and then disappeared forever. Is there any combination of words in the English language that inspires more horror than "Star Wars fan fiction"? I'd rather jump off the barge after Boba than read any of that crap.

Complaints for the sake of complaining...

Wow...I honestly can't believe what I'm reading on this forum.

Seriously, for a forum that is filled with anti-copyright people who scream at the top of their lungs every time somebody even mentions protecting intellectual rights, this just takes the cake. George Lucas has not only moved to encourage and develop the amateur film community, but has pretty much given them carte blanche to use his own Star Wars intellectual property to do it (up to what would be a PG rating), and people are complaining.

If you want to bash this contest because you don't like Lucas or Star Wars, put your money where your mouth is - make a film and outdo him. Because, right now, he's actually doing something really positive here with his intellectual property. Frankly, I don't exactly see too many commentators in this subject so far who can claim to be doing anything creative at all...

Re:Fan fiction

I wonder if hot Wookiee sex in the steamy jungles of Kashykk will be a recurring theme with the furry fanfic writers..

Yet in games, gamers do the same

Whenever someone mods a game, you are doing exactly what George Lucas did, changing the "story" to what you thinks work better.

NWN2 is a prudish game with no nudity, that was a morallity decision by the creators, so are people who mod the game for nudity/sexy altering the original true vision?

There is also demand for more content, especialy romance/interaction type content. This again is then going against the original work. If Obsidian released a patch that suddenly allowed same sex romances to occur would that be seen in the same light as George Lucas work?

What if they released a patch that allowed the final weapon (a sword) to be formed into something more logical for non-fighter classes? Say gloves for a monk and staff for magic users?

What if they changed the story so that the two deaths are no longer unavoidable but depends on your influence with the characters?

All of the would be an improvement in terms of depth, it would be more of a roleplaying game, but when would it cross the line into Han Solo becomes a wimp territory? A patch is afterall mandatory if you want to play online so effectivly it would be like Lucas not releasing DVD's of the orignal version.

There is a hentai game called X-change3, for the western release two scenes were altered because the company didn't want to risk trouble (there is no actuall law against the scenes and since it is an adult game anyway no problem with ratings either). Yet this changes the original story. Almost similar to the han solo incident, if you want to see the original story you have to go to the old japanese copy.

If games are art wich so many claim at wich point does it then become vandalism to alter them? It is not a new question in itself, history has always had periods in wich art has beeen censored/altered to suit the politics of that time BUT in the digital age it has become easier then ever before.

Imagine if you like a full CGI movie but one that is released NOT as a regular video file but rather the animation file so that you render it locally on your own machine. It then becomes trivial to alter it, if YOU choose to not make Han Solo shoot first, is that the same as George Lucas not doing it?

It is something I have thinking about messing around with NWN2, I am seriously tempted to take the original content and rework it to be fuller, remove some of the fluff companions and instead focus more heavily on the better characters and make your actions count for more. In short, the two females would die or not die depending on your actions. For Amie it would depend on your leadership capability, does she obey you to stay out of it OR does she ignore you. Your actions during the fair would determine that.

For Shandra it would be slightly more complex, if you have leadership skill, she would obey your orders, if she had deep feelings for you she would choose to sacrifice her UNLESS you own actions have shown her that selfisness is the way.

The simple fact is that I do not like the heavy handed drama the game has, didn't like it in Wing Commander and still don't like it. People under my command only die on my express orders so stop bleeding soldier, that is an order!

But if I do that am I then not just like Lucas, re-writing an existing finished story to suit my needs?

Re:William Shatner style?

Offtopic? "Fuck you for helping" must be the rule around here. Hope your dog dies asshole.